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16
Top German minister sets out reform agenda with demand for more work (dpa-international.com)
submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by schizoidman@lemmy.zip to c/europe@feddit.org
12 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Germans must work more and for longer, Vice Chancellor Lars Klingbeil said on Wednesday as he outlined his plans for reforming the struggling German economy.

top 12 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] smiletolerantly@awful.systems 9 points 14 hours ago (1 children)
  1. increasing work hours is a one-time "boost". It gives a numbers bump once. It's not continued growth.
  2. working LESS has been shown time and time again to actually make workers more productive
  3. working more will mean even fewer children, a problem we desperately need to address and which will harm the economy even more in the long term
  4. our social contract is broken. Fixing the economy and the country can't be done by extracting more work from the working class. The decades-long profiteers from privatization and giga-profits need their stolen wealth ripped from them. I can not understate this point. Literally all our economical and most of our societal problems could be fixed relatively easily by spending money: repair infrastructure; properly fund and repair the Bahn; pay teachers enough to make the job attractive, fix up schools, make proper education available to everyone; pay higher wages, so parents can choose to only have one parent working, but also provide free Kitas; and so on. I even would go as far as to say that materially and directly improving people's lives like this would deal a blow to the rise of right wing politics and faschism, since a lot of those voters are simply frustrated with their misery and powerlessness (not all, obv...). A supposedly center-left party going "höh--höh, suck it, work more" does the opposite of this. And to get back to this bullet point: the money for ALL of that and more IS THERE. Just... Unjustly held by the few.

Now tell me again, why is it on me to spend additional years of my life toiling away to "fix" the economy when it's ineffectual, counterproductive down the line, and a much easier, more just solution exists?

[–] trollercoaster@sh.itjust.works 3 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago)
  1. increasing work hours is a one-time “boost”. It gives a numbers bump once. It’s not continued growth.
  2. working LESS has been shown time and time again to actually make workers more productive

As you said, you can't measure productivity by simply counting the hours worked. Resorting to such crude metrics is a sign of incompetent management done by people who have no idea whatsoever how to determine the result of the work they are supposed to be organising. I'd say it's a symptom of a managerial caste that has only learned to cosplay as hard working by doing meaningless bullshit work for 60 hours a week, but whose only actual competence even remotely related to productive work consists of reading the clock.

[–] trollercoaster@sh.itjust.works 5 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Career politician who has never done any real work in his life demands his subjects work more. Next he'll tell us to eat cake.

Just my kind of humour.

[–] Pip@feddit.org 0 points 12 hours ago

As if. Of course he's worked hard to get where he is at.

[–] Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 17 points 1 day ago

Work harder, peasants! Those tax cuts for the rich won't finance themselves!

[–] Shipgirlboy@sh.itjust.works 17 points 1 day ago (1 children)

...In return, high earners and those with substantial wealth would have to “make a contribution,” he said.

Hahahaha, yeah, like that's ever going to happen

[–] Zahtu@feddit.org 8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

yeah, like the push of CDU to remove/repel erbscchaftssteuer. like, they are not even hiding, that the current administration only works for the rich people and the industry.

[–] Mim@lemmy.zip 10 points 1 day ago

Leck Eier, Lars.

[–] Pip@feddit.org -2 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

The volume of labor is one of the few levers to create growth, next to investments in assets, education and product innovation. Economic growth is paramount, so good on them to take this unpopular but effective measure.

[–] taguebbe@feddit.org 7 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago) (1 children)

No, there is a point of diminishing returns. And there are many much more important things they could fix. The infrastructure in germany is crumbling, our IT-competence is lacking, our industry relied on never ending sales of ice-cars with bad software (and gov.-bailouts, which the corrupt CDU and SPD are happy to provide). 50% of the populations wealth was inherited, we desperatly need a wealth-tax. We need foreign workers, but they are met with (structural) racism, a rising Afd, terrible buerocracy and so on. We should be investing in renewables, but our current gov is going for gas and oil - while the Globe is biting there nails because the global market for fossil fuels is... In turmoil, let's say. Germany as a production-focussed industry will come to an end. Decades of Investments in the far east are taking their toll. The only resource the country has is engineering. We should focus on education and building up specialised industry, not longer work hours. That will solve none of the countrys problems in the short run, nor in the long run.

[–] Pip@feddit.org -1 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

With all the problems you describe, and I agree they exist, solving them will require more labor. Streets, solar panel installations, education, better public services, IT services.... All of those require more labor, more work. It's a part of the solution but not the only one.

[–] smiletolerantly@awful.systems 3 points 14 hours ago
  1. increasing work hours is a one-time "boost". It gives a numbers bump once. It's not continued growth.
  2. working LESS has been shown time and time again to actually make workers more productive
  3. working more will mean even fewer children, a problem we desperately need to address and which will harm the economy even more in the long term
  4. our social contract is broken. Fixing the economy and the country can't be done by extracting more work from the working class. The decades-long profiteers from privatization and giga-profits need their stolen wealth ripped from them. I can not understate this point. Literally all our economical and most of our societal problems could be fixed relatively easily by spending money: repair infrastructure; properly fund and repair the Bahn; pay teachers enough to make the job attractive, fix up schools, make proper education available to everyone; pay higher wages, so parents can choose to only have one parent working, but also provide free Kitas; and so on. I even would go as far as to say that materially and directly improving people's lives like this would deal a blow to the rise of right wing politics and faschism, since a lot of those voters are simply frustrated with their misery and powerlessness (not all, obv...). A supposedly center-left party going "höh--höh, suck it, work more" does the opposite of this. And to get back to this bullet point: the money for ALL of that and more IS THERE. Just... Unjustly held by the few.

Now tell me again, why is it on me to spend additional years of my life toiling away to "fix" the economy when it's ineffectual, counterproductive down the line, and a much easier, more just solution exists?